


if anybody could have saved me it would have been you

by explosivesky



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, i wanted clara to write letters like virginia woolf? that's all i remember about writing this, yet another hybrid au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:06:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28775040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/explosivesky/pseuds/explosivesky
Summary: He spends the night threading stars into her skin and pouring the moon into the craters of her hips; she watches the birth of deep space begin unfolding underneath her eyelids, and the universe is returned to beauty once again. Together, he believes, they could be the greatest story ever told; if only she would come back to him.
Relationships: Twelfth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald
Kudos: 3





	if anybody could have saved me it would have been you

**if anybody could have saved me it would have been you**

/1

The Doctor has made difficult choices before, you know. To burn or not to burn, to live or not to live; to stay or to run away. The decisions may never be simple, or obvious, but they are always possible.

Until Clara Oswald is caught on the brink of death, in the middle of a battle she should have never known existed, let alone fought in; it’s the Time War all over again - the Daleks and the Timelords and somehow, a mix of both - but her lone scream outweighs the memory of every child’s horrified crying in his head from the worst day; her look of terror and fear replaces even the most devastating of losses.

She finds his eyes in the chaos at the last second, her lips curving around his name, hand stretching towards him; his hearts split themselves brutally in half, muscles wrenching apart, arteries tearing--

He has never had to make an impossible choice. He has been stopped, saved, protected from himself each time; usually by the person he’s about to lose.

Except letting Clara Oswald die has never been a choice. It has never even been an option. And so he doesn’t.

Fortunately, he’s the only one without a plan.

/2

He’d always known Missy had _picked_ her for something, but never known what - until now.

“I can save her.” Missy’s smile is deadly, victorious. “Oh, I’ve been working on this little thing for _centuries--_ ” She blinks her eyelashes deliberately, fluttering at him. “Of course, Doctor, it’s up to you. Would you like to formally adopt your... _pet_?” She holds up one finger. “No take-backs.” 

He doesn’t comprehend what she means, at first, but the idea of keeping Clara alive is too overpowering to nitpick at the details. “How?” He asks desperately, cradling her in his arms. “How?” 

“Ah-ah,” she declines flirtatiously. “Yes or no only, darling. But I will tell you - she’s been trained _brilliantly_ for this. _I_ certainly wouldn’t refuse.”

“Yes,” he gives in, unable to do anything else. His lungs are attuned to Clara’s, and his breathing rattles. “Yes, yes, _please,_ yes _._ ”

“Put her down, and close your eyes,” she insists, and he does exactly what he’s told. He’s in no position to refute her, with Clara shivering violently, growing colder. He sets her on the ground, backing away, and covers his face.

Something bright and blinding bleeds through his fingers, snaking underneath his eyelids, cracking against the inside of his skull; it’s familiar, painfully burning, _all-consuming_ \--

And suddenly, he knows _exactly_ what Missy’s had planned since the beginning.

Clara is screaming, writhing on the floor, her body recomposing and reconditioning itself, cells and atoms reconstructing, organs duplicating--

The moment is over. His line of sight narrows to encompass one thing and one thing only. 

“A brand-new Timelady,” Missy trills airily, dancing around Clara’s body. He’s instantly on the ground, holding her in his arms once again, hunched over, face ashen and wet. “Portable Time Vortex - so _unbelievably_ handy, isn’t it? I call it PTV for short.” She’s incredibly pleased with herself and her little trick; this has all been just another game she’s engineered to perfection. “I toyed with _Portable Untempered Schism,_ but PUS is _hardly_ as marketable.” 

He ignores everything after the first sentence. His jaw is too heavy, rusty. “How?”

She gives him an exaggerated wink. “You know how I _love_ to play with death.”

Clara’s breathing unsteadily, chest heaving; her appearance is unchanged, but he can feel her two hearts beating against his, struggling to sync. She’s alive. But he does not yet know the cost.

“What have you _done?_ ” He asks hollowly. Her ribs repair themselves one by one.

Missy stops prancing in front of him, staring down. “I gave _you_ the choice, Doctor, if _I_ recall,” she relishes, smirk pouring out of her mouth. “So, shall I repeat the question back to you? Or is your power of recognisance undamaged?” She twirls what appears to be a necklace with a large locket around her index finger. “Oh, how much _fun_ it will be, building the new wave of Time-people.” She blows a kiss at him. “Sorry, honey, I decided Timelords as the general race title was a little too male-domineering - what are we, _humans?_ ”

He gently picks up Clara’s body, holding her as close to him as possible, where no more harm will come to her. “And what am I to expect?” He doesn’t recognize his own voice, empty and desolate, but reluctantly - unequivocally - relieved. 

“She’ll be up and about in a day or two or sixty,” Missy responds, kicking the body of a dead Dalek. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten what it was like to stare into the heart of Time.” 

As if he ever could. “I haven’t.” 

“Now she’ll never die,” Missy announces ominously as he leaves, her voice a song amidst a cemetery.

/3

When she wakes, he’s unprepared, because nothing can prepare anyone for this sort of situation; he wasn’t, Missy wasn’t. It just _is._ There’s a reason the Time Vortex is a test - some can’t take it. Some are driven mad. Some cease to exist at all.

She’s rocking back and forth on his bed, her head in her hands, eyes wild and terrified. “What’s happening?” She repeats, over and over and over, but he has no idea what she’s seeing and so cannot tell her. “What’s happening?”

He approaches her delicately. “Clara. Can you hear me?”

Her neck whips to him. She holds his gaze for three seconds - he hears her counting every miniscule increment of time under her breath - before turning away. Her expression is set in torture, and the TARDIS buzzes furiously. 

“Everything,” she whispers insanely. “Everything is here. I can see it all.” Her fingers clutch at her shirt, fingers digging into both her hearts.

“I know,” he says, because he does.

She meets his stare again. “Why do I sound like you?” She asks brokenly, openly sobbing, confused and frightened. “Why do we share a heartbeat?” She presses her forehead into her knees, fingernails cutting against her scalp. “My head - there’s too much inside my head - the entire _universe_ \--”

He can’t watch it anymore, can’t watch the pain he’s caused; he sits carefully on the edge of the bed and says, “Clara, I’m going to help you.”

She continues weeping, like she doesn’t even realize he’s there; he presses the tips of his fingers against her temple, taking over her mind, and her head is mercifully empty once again. 

\--

The next time she wakes, he isn’t so lucky, and the knowledge of a Timelord has settled quietly into her brain and sits there, waiting to be accessed. 

Her eyes are cold and unflinching. She says, “Tell me. Now.”

She’s still tangled in his sheets, but her bones have iced over, the weight of the world cemented throughout the porousness. He had always imagined her in his bed under a different circumstance, in a different life, a different time.

He says, “You would have died.”

“Clearly, I’m not dead.” She enunciates. 

He explains softly, “Missy chose you to become...a Timelady. As an experiment. She’s been planning it since - since she gave you my number.” But no. The blame does not fall to Missy, as he wishes it could. He forces out, “But I made the choice.”

Her stare narrows. “You decided this?” She asks pointedly, and somewhere, she’s begging him to tell her she’s wrong. “ _You_?”

He can’t lie. He can’t ease the consequences. “Yes,” he says. His voice is low, eyes boring into hers. 

“I know what this means,” she says quietly. “You knew I didn’t want this.”

“I did.” There is nothing to deny. He is standing in the doorway, hands in his pockets. 

“I don’t want to live forever,” she lashes out, quivering. “I don’t want to be _you._ ” 

It hurts, which is what she’s aiming for; he’s destroyed and rebuilt her entire life, her entire universe, her entire future in the span of a split-second decision. He can’t fault her for that. He won’t point out how being like him is what landed her here in the first place.

He only responds, “I know.” And then: “I won’t apologize.”

Her fingers clench into fists. She heaves herself out of bed - the effort it must be taking her to even move is instrumental, considering her body has been rebuilt - and stands solidly, her stare fiery and furious.

“You won’t apologize?” She repeats dangerously, taking a step towards him, her chest pounding at the effort. 

“I _can’t_. Clara, I can’t apologize,” he confesses achingly, spreading his hands. This is all he has to offer. “How can I? You’re _alive._ ” 

It’s still too vague, blurry, rough; there are too many pieces left hanging in the air, spread out across his mouth. Alive. Is that what she is? If she’s alive _now,_ what was she before this? Why couldn’t he have just let her _die_? 

They are questions she cannot answer at the moment, cannot even bear to think about - she buries her face in her hands. She says, muffled, “Take me home.” 

As if she still considers her tiny flat _home._ He knows she doesn’t. “You don’t want that,” he says.

“Stop telling me what I want!” She finally breaks, screaming at him. “You’ve made _enough_ decisions on my behalf, haven’t you, _Doctor_?”

He bites down on the inside of his lip, hard. She pushes by him, headed towards the console room. She screams again, “Take me _home!_ ”

The TARDIS obeys her when she pulls the lever, unable to fight back, and understanding what is right and wrong more than the Doctor does currently. Clara is crying again, struggling to reconcile who she was with who she is now, with _what_ she is now. 

“I want to go home,” she repeats again, weeping, and all he wants to do is hold her.

The TARDIS lands. He says, “Please.”

It’s almost enough. He sees her halt, her subtle hesitation before her step lands on the walkway. _Almost._

“Don’t follow me,” she says. 

She leaves and she doesn’t look back, and it is the last he hears of Clara Oswald for a hundred years.

/4

Someone knocks on her door a day later, while her mind is shot and the walls of her flat are confining, constraining. She throws it open, ready to beg the Doctor to take her away, only it isn’t him standing there.

“Aren’t you just _spectacular,_ ” Missy states, circling around her. “What are you doing here, Clara? Haven’t you lost your mind?”

It’s in this instant that she understands exactly why Missy is the way she is, and exactly why the Doctor is who _he_ is - they have to be, in order to deal with the numbing, immeasurable pressure of every instance of time and space shocking their neurons, pooling against their cortexes. 

“Yes,” is all she says.

Missy laughs delightedly. “Now you know why all we do is run,” Missy tells her. “What else is there to do? Sit around and _think_?” The mere idea sends her into hysterics. She wipes at her eyes and takes Clara’s hand in hers, clasping something around her wrist. “I’ve come to set you free, my little bird.” 

It’s a Vortex Manipulator. She’s seen them before, knows exactly what they are, knows exactly how they work. She stares in awe and wonderment at the device that could grant her her own escape. 

She says, “Why?”

Missy gives her an almost offended look. “Clara, I _invented_ you. And what bond is stronger than between a creator and its creation?” Her smile twists. She says, “I’ll check in on you in about fifty years. Ta-ta.”

Fifty. It seems like nothing at all. Clara’s fingers spread across the buttons.

The moment before she disappears, Missy says, “Oh, and Clara? _Do_ try to not travel alone.” She presses a kiss to Clara’s cheek, and finishes, “You’ll end up just like me if you do!” 

Her laughter peels through the fracture of time and space, and Clara is pulled somewhere far away from everywhere she’s been and everyone she was.

/5

She doesn’t travel alone, not always, and she doesn’t have a TARDIS to hop around the universe with a companion the way he did. Instead, she settles briefly, experimenting with her own lives, comprehending everything there is to comprehend. And finally, after the third person she’s considered a friend - held a deep affection for - dies, she picks up a pen, and writes the Doctor a letter. There are things she keeps for herself, for her own memory. 

_Hello, old man._

_I am unsure how long it has been for you, but it has been one-hundred and four years since I left you at my doorstep. And it has been barely a blink in the lifespan of the universe; it is as if I left you the day before yesterday._

_Until now, it has felt like only yesterday. But time, against all odds, is passing._

_I spoke with Missy recently - I cannot tell you how recently, for I am uncertain as to when within nonlinear progression of her life - and she told me that your face remains unchanged, but that you have no one new. I am surprised I have not been replaced, I admit, and I am impressed you have survived this long alone. I, too, remain unchanged._

_Her plans for world domination seem to be going well, though I am sure you are well aware. Invite her to tea sometime. Perhaps that will appease her, and she will not have to resort to such drastic measures in order to get your attention._

_Anyway--_

_I am writing to you because there are only three of us._

_I am writing to you because of those I’ve met who are immortal, their minds are free, clear of this burden of knowledge, this proof of life and invincibility and ultimate finality of death; they do not understand the delicate gears and clock-like functions of burning galaxy, the meticulously technical components of every breaking star. They are blissfully unaware of other dimensions and shadows of our universe. And it is not the same._

_I am writing to you because I do not forgive you. I have faced loss and adversity and hope and joy. But in the end, death, I believe, would have been no comparison to this gaping, immeasurable loneliness._

_Clara_

He weeps when he reads it, his nerves swelling, expanding uncomfortably underneath his skin; it’s as if his entire body is bruising for her, unable to heal. But she is real, and writing, and reaching out to him - and slowly, slowly, she is understanding.

 _You are not a person I ever intended to replace,_ he writes back. _And you are alive, thus am I._

_Love. Have you faced love?_

It’s another ten years before he receives an answer.

_No._

/6

He invites Missy to tea.

She is over-the-moon, ecstatic when she receives the call; they meet at a casual little cafe in Paris, sometime in the late 1920’s. They have both always had a connection to Earth, regardless of their motivations.

She brings the cup to her mouth. She says, “What brought on this change of hearts?” 

He watches her dump four sugarcubes into the liquid, stirring. He responds truthfully, “I was scolded.”

Her eyes are bright. “By _Clara_?”

“Yes.” He runs a hand through his hair. “You’ve done a number on her.”

“Oh, we’re _friends._ ” She says it like their history is all water under the bridge. “ _Someone_ has to keep an eye on me, and you’re doing a poor job.”

He smiles unwillingly, soft and low. Missy’s nails scratch against the tablecloth. The Paris streets are sparse, casual and slow. He says, “She’s a better Doctor than I am.”

Missy giggles girlishly, light. “Perhaps it’s time to change your name.”

Yes, perhaps. Let Clara be the Doctor. Let Clara save all the people he can’t. She could do it, too. She has the potential, the disposition; he is certain she is out there now, making someone smile.

He asks, “So what have you been up to?” The concern in his voice is genuine. He has not moved on. 

She observes him silently for a moment, before her hand reaches out and covers his, tapping twice. 

She purses her lips and says, “Well, I was planning on taking over the world, but I suppose that can wait a year or two. I do _love_ catching up.” 

His mouth lifts. He tells her, “You are my oldest friend. We should do this more often.” 

The sincerity affects her; but she senses the sadness within him, as well, the blinding void where Clara used to be and now isn’t.

So she says, “You know, Clara’s here.”

His hearts stutter and stop, restarting; his face falls carefully blank, caught in a mix of hope, desperation, love. A spoon clatters to the ground at the table behind them; a boy trips on the street corner and cries. He says, “ _Here?_ ”

But he is not surprised. Clara has always loved Paris; the decadence and grandeur and art. Missy says, smirking, “She’s rather popular. Been here for about a month. She’s shacking up with Hemingway - she’s got quite the thing for writers, doesn’t she? Before this, she had an affair with Jane Austen. One of those is true.”

He rolls his eyes harmlessly, heartbeats pounding in his throat. He completely buys that Clara would go back to Jane Austen after their original meeting - but Hemingway? Absolutely not. “She despises Hemingway. She thinks he’s too chauvinistic, and his female characters are too shallow.” 

“Ding-ding-ding!” Missy announces. She sips her tea again. “You can find her just down there, at the riverbank,” she says, nodding her head towards the bridge at the end of the street. “If you like.”

His head whips around; the idea of Clara so close is - is--

“You planned this,” he says, turning back slowly, meeting her gaze.

She lifts and drops her shoulders delicately. “Honey,” she replies, “I plan a lot of things.”

\--

Clara’s sitting on a bench next to the river, watching the way the water moves against the flow of boats, the sunset painting in her eyes. 

She glances up, her spine tingling, and squints at a face peeking over the top of the bridge. When she blinks, the person is gone; or maybe they were only ever a trick of the light.

/7

He keeps watch over her, after that, and does make it a point to have tea with Missy whenever she’s a step away from releasing some diabolical master plan; she finds ways to entertain herself across the universe, on other planets, making smaller messes. He lets her be.

But Clara very rarely does anything dramatic: she wavers around the edges of the action, always dipping in and out of it, close enough to the center that she doesn’t get burned but is still warmed by the heat. She has learned what he never could: how to make ripples and not tidal waves.

So he observes from a distance as she goes on, traipsing about through time and space; she spends months as a bartender on an outpost orbiting the Argolin leisure planets, works as a mechanic on Duchamp 33, and visits Florana every twenty years or so; it’s clearly her favourite place. He can’t blame her.

Her name remains unknown, but she is whispered about across the star systems for the peace, comfort, and hope she brings; she has touched more than she thinks she has. Together, he believes, they could be the greatest story ever told.

If only she would come back to him.

/8

She writes to him again. She knows he won’t initiate contact first, but she isn’t sure why. Fear. Maybe he’s afraid of what he’ll find. People always hold back out of fear.

She has this urge, this unshakable desire to _know_ him the best after all these years. He used to be hers and hers alone; she remembers his fingers lacing with hers, his gentle smile, his eyes, his voice - oh, the things she would give to hear him speak. But she still thrusts the blame upon him, and she has not yet learned how to let go.

_I sense myself growing stale and unmotivated._

_There is still so much left to see, so much left to learn. But I am tired of feeling so alone. I try to teach the importance of kindness, and empathy, and generosity. I have so much information and I cannot give any of it away fast enough; so many insights into the moral battlegrounds of every-day instances, the differences between good and right, wrong and evil. And love. Love hovers on the tip of my tongue, the point of my pen, dripping in ink. I know so much of love. But I do not understand it._

_And you?_ She asks in her letter. _Have you found love?_

It takes him a long while to reply - she thinks, it’s hard for her to tell, nowadays - but she imagines his struggle. What if he has? Is she prepared to face that truth, to handle those consequences? Does she even want to know the answer?

He writes back, in careful, looping script, _Not since the day you left._

/9

Kataa Floko is everything Clara is searching for and everything she isn’t; it’s tropical, gorgeous, and like nowhere else she’s ever been. It’s the closest thing to paradise she can manage, considering the true idea of paradise is sitting somewhere between the distant mirror of her heartbeats.

Missy asks, sprawled out on the pale-blue sand next to her, “Have you thought about seeing him?” 

Clara lifts her sunglasses above her eyes. Missy sips loudly on some tropical, alien cocktail she’d picked up down the road. “Of course.” 

She raises her eyebrows, waiting. “ _And_?” She prods, staring out across the ocean, where the reflections of the glittering, diamond coral reefs make the entire surface sparkle like an endless row of gemstones. “Forever is a long while to hold a grudge, dear.”

“I have to,” Clara responds, burying her feet languidly in the hot earth. Missy digs the base of her glass into the sand. “Who else is to blame?” 

“Me, _obviously,_ ” Missy says, literally pointing at herself. “I set this all up, you know.”

Clara smiles passively. “Yes, but _you_ are a psychopath, and _he_ should have known better.”

Missy sighs loudly, rolling over, head resting on her palm. She stares at Clara over the rim of her own sunglasses. “Sweetheart,” Missy tells her, “there is one piece of this puzzle you are refusing to acknowledge, and for the lives of me - get it, because I’m a Timelady, we never run out of them - cannot fathom _why._ ”

Clara says, “Well, what is it?” 

The water crawls up to them, the moon of the planet rising on the horizon. Missy tut-tuts under her breath, flopping onto her back once more. 

“I don’t want to give it away,” she says. “This bouncing back and forth is incredible for my bank account. Vacations with you, scones with him. Spoil all the fun? As _if._ ” She mutters out of the corner of her mouth, “You’re winning the divorce, by the way.”

Clara laughs at the commentary, but the notion that they were even married gouges holes against her ribs, her hearts attempting to squeeze themselves out. “Shut up.” 

The sea rises and rotates in front of them, the sun dazzling the moon; the light is the blood that rushes to its face. It is beautiful and temporary. But she’s left wondering what part of herself she’s locked away, and when she’ll be ready to open it back up again.

/10

She travels with a boy, for awhile, and he falls in love with her three-hundred and fifty years too late.

He doesn’t try to kiss her; he simply tells her, aloof and aware. He says, “There’s someone else, isn’t there? There’s always been someone else.”

She doesn’t reply. Her shoes kick against the dust of the road.

He says, “How long has it been?”

The stars stretch above her head like they’re wrapping around her, cocooning her. She misses the blanket of space between those galaxies, misses flying through it, unobstructed and free. Somewhere out there, a supernova collapses and a sun is born. She thinks of the Doctor, itching for that fire, his half-smile crooked on his face.

She exhales, her breath coming out in steam.

She says, “Honestly, it feels like forever.”

The boy doesn’t come back.

/11

There are times when she’s astutely aware of death creeping up on her companions like the gentle push of white foam against a barren shore, and others where the last breath is inexplicably sudden and unexpected, a wave crashing violently into the rocks; they laugh until their lungs burst, their looks of joy frozen, and even in death they are peaceful. 

She fears her own death, once or twice - she draws almost too close, and the flashbacks are painful, her body growing a new heart - but she also has moments of welcoming it; on a particularly sentimental evening, she is four-hundred years old and the blackness of night sits in front of her, beckoning. Virginia Woolf is snapped shut beside her, pages yellowed and torn. She writes him a letter by candlelight. She has returned to where she’s come from.

Everyone she loves is dead or gone, and finally she _understands._

 _I suppose it has been awhile,_ the note reads. He holds it close to his chest, his hand pressing against his head. _I find I cannot measure time the way I was able to when there was so little of it, and it was so precious to me. Now, it is my most plentiful resource. You must understand that. What is the value in something boundless and unending?_

 _I am writing to you because I am awake as the rest of the universe turns without me, and it is a sight I vaguely remember appreciating - the curve of the earth, of a sun, of any star or planet filled to the brim with beauty - and you were there, and you smiled. Do you still? I am loathe to admit this, but it was so much simpler smiling with you than any other, easier opening myself up to joy and pain and anger and kindness; I have days, months go by where I feel nothing at all. But you have always made me feel_ something, _anything._

_There was an evening - long ago, now, too long ago to recall the details, and as you know, the more a memory is called upon and glossed over, the faster it fades in accuracy - but we were reading. You’d laugh if you could, as we were always reading, but I know this is hurting you just as it is me. We were discussing what literature I was going to teach, blathering on about Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf--_

_“If anybody could have saved me it would have been you.” I asked you, Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t that tragic?_

_You said, No, Clara, it’s only tragic._

_I asked, Why?_

_You said, Because I’m sure he would have done anything to save her. Because death is never beautiful. Because - imagine the person you love the most in the world dying, and knowing that not even your best efforts could keep them safe._

_You said, I need to keep you safe._

_You said, I can’t_ breathe _without you._

_I wondered about that interaction extensively during my first life - what you were attempting to tell me, what you hoped would always remain unsaid, unacted upon. But I think I knew. I knew and I did not want to know, because the implications, the repercussions, were so horribly devastating._

_So I am writing to tell you that I forgive you._

_It has taken me four hundred years, but I forgive you because_ I _would have saved you. I would have sooner died than let you perish; I would have thrown myself in any fire, made any promise. I know that you keeping me alive was through love, and as you and I both recognize - love is selfish and selfless, a myriad of contradictions and juxtapositions. I was selfish. I wanted to spend my life with you, but would not allow you the same courtesy. I’m sorry._

_If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. And so you did._

_Do you forgive me? Can you forgive me? Is it possible, after all this time? Or is all this time the reason forgiveness is possible?_

She seals the letter, and the TARDIS materializes in front of her, light scraping the ceiling of her living room.

The doors swing open. He steps out, looking exactly as he had the day she’d left him, disheveled and eyes glossy. 

He says, holding up a faded envelope, “I got your letter.”

She offers the same piece of paper. “I haven’t sent it, yet.”

He barely even hears her, too preoccupied with observing every insignificant physical change that has grown into place without him. His palms are itching, chest aching. He murmurs, “Oh.” And then: “You will.” 

She stands carefully. If she listens, she can hear all of their heartbeats, pattering in nervousness and anxiousness and disbelief. She says, “So?”

He says, without a second thought, “I forgive you.”

Her smile is the most incomprehensible beauty he’s ever seen. 

She echoes, eyes cast low, “I forgive you.”

They are unsure how to approach the situation, how to broach the details. Four hundred years. It isn’t a long time, but to them, it’s been more time than they can count. He remains steady, unmoving. The burning wick cracks.

“I’m afraid I’m no longer who you fell in love with,” she voices at last, fingertips gliding across the wooden arm of the chair. Wax drips onto the table. “It’s difficult to remain stagnant in a universe whose composition shifts so magnificently one millisecond to the next.”

“Love is a promise,” he says quietly, echoing himself from all those years ago. “I have never loved a specific version of you, Clara Oswald. I haved loved every possibility of you, everything you have been and will be, everything you can become.” He places a hand directly against her cheek, her head tilting into his palm automatically, lips parting. It has been so long since he touched her. He smiles, subdued and delicate, like a soft-burning ember. “Time,” he says, “does not disillusion me.”

“You never sought me out,” she says. Her voice trickles out of her mouth, pebbles in a stream shifting against each other. “Why?”

“I did.” His arm falls, fingers catching in her hair, twisting it gently over her shoulder. “You were angry at me. I let you be, until you were ready, but I was always...there. There are many things I needed to let you learn alone.” He studies the depth of her eyes, full of their own space, their own wonders and disasters. “Did you?”

She tastes the words in her mouth, licking her lips. “I think I did,” she admits softly. “I think I must have.” 

“And?”

The glow of the candlelight swathes her face in shadows, her eyelashes cast iron chains across her cheeks. She glances down and then away. She says, “Oh, what a fool I’ve been.” 

“We come to terms with ourselves on our own time.” He relieves her of her burdens. “You and I, in particular, have so much of it - why rush?”

“Yes, perhaps,” she agrees amicably. “The urgency of forgiveness may have disappeared, but it lingered. I was always going to forgive you. Delaying the inevitable was a waste.”

“A waste of what?” 

She meets his eyes unflinchingly. The amount of pain she’s caused him is echoed in the lines of his face, the firmness of his jaw, but the love - the love has never wavered. “A waste of us,” she tells him, taking a step closer. “A waste of beauty and magnificence and words; oh, the _words._ I imagine the conversations we could have had, the sights we could have seen together. The good you and I could have done.” She reaches out slowly, grasping one of his hands in her own. 

He stares at the way their fingers interlock, so familiar after so many years, and finally, so complete. She waits expectantly. The seconds tick by. Seconds are no longer meaningless with her standing in front of him.

He says, smiling, “Only an English teacher would mourn the missed opportunity of exchanging words.”

Her answering grin is reminiscent, speaking to the core of her identity. She responds, “I missed _you._ ” She moves closer still. “Every minute, every moment since I left - I’ve been consumed by you. By the memory of you, the idea of you, hating you, blaming you, loving you, missing you.” Her throat traps her breath in her chest, narrowing. “It was such a constant ache that I let haunt me for four hundred years because of _pride._ And for what?”

She loses the trail, but he picks it up, needing the end. “I don’t know,” he answers neutrally. Her fingers curl tightly around his. “For what?”

She shakes her head, an even motion that sends her expression briefly back into the dim light, her eyes too shiny, glinting. “For _nothing._ ” She spits it out like poison in her mouth. “For selfishness and stubbornness. I punished you for saving me, saving the person you--”

“You can say it.” He eggs her on. “You’re right. You can say it.”

Her teeth dig into her bottom lip, skidding. She finishes, “Saving the person you loved more than anything.” The statement sinks into the air, absorbent and dense. “I punished you for love. And I’ve learned that I’m no better. I’ve learned that love is all that is worth anything, really.”

The silence that dawns on the precipice of the declaration is anchored, drawn-out; despair, sadness, hurt wells up underneath his heart, like hot acid eating through his muscle, his skin. His breath shudders and rattles in his chest. He releases her hand, catching her wrist instead, and then he tugs her into him, their bodies pressing together. He says, “Now you know.” His other hand curves around the back of her neck; her fingers clench around the fabric of his coat. “I learned that when you were about to die. That’s when I knew.” 

She leans up carefully and touches her lips underneath his left eye; they come away wet. She feels all the empty space inside of her filling. She whispers, “I’m sorry.” She is still so close. “I’m so sorry.”

His mouth covers hers, tasting salt and thyme and metal; he kisses her like he should have been doing so the past four hundred years, like she should have died and miraculously didn’t. His head drops to her shoulder, and the fabric grows damp; his voice sticks against the walls of his throat, choking him. 

“I missed you,” he says disconsolately, hands splayed against her spine. “I missed you.” 

Her fingers curl in his hair, and she presses her lips to the side of his head. She takes a step back, her arms falling around his. She grabs hold of his elbows and begins to pull him with her. She says, “Come with me.” Her voice is breathy and dark. “This is the only way I know how to show you. To tell you.”

He follows her to bed, where he spends the night threading stars into her skin and pouring the moon into the craters of her hips; she watches the birth of deep space begin underneath her eyelids, and the universe is returned to beauty once again.

/12

Walking back onboard the TARDIS is like a dream. It croones whimsically at her, overjoyed.

The console room’s changed, and it looks more like a library than ever; though his guitar sits in the corner, still frequently played. She scans the shelves, picking out the wornest books, their pages dog-eared. 

She pulls out _Selected Diaries_ by Virginia Woolf and allows it to fall open; the Doctor’s own handwriting pops out at her. He’s circled paragraphs, commented on segments. 

Her eyes drop to a boldly underlined sentence.

_In case you ever foolishly forget; I’m never not thinking of you._

He had added underneath, _And will be for the rest of time._

He approaches carefully behind her, his footsteps echoing. 

She asks, pointing at the page, “Is this for me?”

He smiles softly. He says, “Who else?”

The TARDIS hums, Gallifreyan letters still circling the console, only now they’re legible to her. She stores the book back in its original position. She says, “I could name some names.”

He shakes his head, fingers slipping underneath her jaw, tilting her head. “Clara.” He kisses her once, noses brushing. “Some days, yours was the only name I could remember.”

Her palms cup his cheeks. She says, “I looked for you everywhere I went. I’d tell myself I was trying to escape you. But all I did was keep you as close as I could without holding you there myself.”

The sun burns through his eyes. He says, “You’re always here to me.” He never forgets. “That statement is as true now as it was then.”

She responds, “And now it will be true in all interpretations of its meaning.” She steps towards the console, fingertips caressing every lever and button purposefully. Her expression is set in awe, tenderness, regret. She’s silent for a moment. 

He says gently, watching her, “You’re home.”

She turns to him, her eyes full of tears. “Home,” she echoes, lips tilting. “What a wonderful concept.”

\--

And in the end, there isn’t one.


End file.
